Puerto Rico was already in trouble after suffering a “lost decade” without economic growth after 2005, leading to a default on its public debt and mass migration from the island. That was before Hurricane Maria.
More people were killed by Maria than by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. This time, we can't blame anyone but ourselves. The Trump administration and majority-GOP Congress treated post-Maria Puerto Rico with malignant neglect. As the 2018 hurricane season fast approaches, Puerto Rico remains in dire
Situated in modern India, an Indian writer reflects on the still extant disparate roles of masters and slaves as parts of a vestigial system of imperial and racial capitalism, where to be a master was alleged to be a total provider, and to be a servant was not a job but a total identity.
The simple story of Cortés's evisceration of the the Aztecs is not so simple. In letters to Spain's King Carlos I, justifying morally Mexico’s occupation, Cortés distorted what was in fact a messy and confusing war involving several armies from already competing European nations. His lies linger.
What is euphemistically referred to as “modernity” is marked with the indelible stain of what might be termed the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism, with the bloody process of human bondage as the driving and animating force of this abject horror.
More Puerto Ricans—around 5.4 million—now live in the United States than in Puerto Rico, with around 3.3 million residents. The continued depopulation of the Caribbean island appears unstoppable.
Black Panther is a story we haven't seen told before in popular cinema — a story about black people completely untouched by colonialism, who exist entirely outside the global systems of institutionalized racism.
Despite the time elapsed, almost three-quarters of a century ago, a similar text, with the same title, could be written today: “Adrift by the seas of history, without direction, without destination, goes Puerto Rico: for four and a half centuries “ Now it should be added that the situation is worse and the island, hit by fierce hurricanes, especially the most recent and brutal named Donald Trump, faces a decisive moment in its history.
In the wake of Hurricanes Maria and Irma, the Caribbean must escape the trappings of modern-day colonialism and seek out its own kinds of sovereignties.
By now the botched, indifferent response of the Trump administration to Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico has been well-documented. Puerto Ricans, however, are not the only US citizens whose lack of democratic rights has affected its quality of life, and for the worse. The same can be said for the residents of Washington, DC, the nation’s capital.
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